Thursday, 16 May 2013

Las Preguntas – Names (Pablo Neruda)

Jan Neruda died in Prague in 1891. He was a Czech national
poet who had a street named for him in Mala Strana. The Chilean poet who took
Neruda’s name for a pseudonym did so to hide from his father the fact that he
wrote poetry.

Hay algo más tonto en la vida

que llamarse Pablo Neruda?

Is there anything sillier in life

than to be called Pablo Neruda?

[XXXII]

The pen name became his public name. Even before he won the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, the Chilean had immortalised the unSpanish
name of Neruda in a way undreamt of by his great Czech inspiration.

Quién da los nombres y los números

al inocente innumerable?

Who assigns names and numbers

to the innumerable innocent?

[LXIV]

Nearing his own death soon after that Prize, Pablo Neruda
wrote a poem filled with questions. We can hear him gazing at the world. One of
his recurring concerns is names. For poets, as for most of us, names are
essential meaning, but as he meets mortality Pablo Neruda wonders even about
names.

Dónde están los Donaldas,

las Clorindas, las Eduvigis?

Where did they go, the Donaldas,

the Clorindas, the Eduvigises?

[IX]

Where the Pablos and Jans? Questions in the poem move with
the familiarity of thought. Our names are our own, whether we wrote a word in
our lives. Poets too have names that, with death, become associated with their
words. They go, leaving colours.

Quando escribió su libro azul

Rubén Darío no era verde?

When he wrote his blue book

wasn’t Rubén Darío green?

[XXX]

Pablo Neruda wonders if he will leave behind yellow ribbons.
He asks, it seems to himself but also to us, well what is fame, or lack of
fame, before the force of time? It is as though the name itself matters not at
all, it may as well be invisible.

Es verdad que reparten cartas

transparentes, por todo el cielo?

Is it true they scatter

transparent letters across the sky?

[VII]

Even the great names of history turn into comic parts before
the vast sweep of human time. Pablo Neruda has wry fun with this Hispanic
turner of time and tide.

Por qué Cristóbal Colón

no pudo descubrir a España?

Why wasn’t Christopher Columbus

able to discover Spain?

[VIII]

While throughout the poem it is Pablo Neruda’s knowledge of
time running out that inspires the questions.

Y encuentras en la calavera

tu estirpe a hueso condenada?

And in the skull do you discover

your ancestry condemned to bone?

[XXVIII]

Faced with what he knows about the scale of the Earth and
Creation, Pablo Neruda gets intimate, as intimate as France and Venezuela. Some
of his questions are in the nature of the Chicken-and-the-Egg.

Y por qué el queso se dispuso

a ejercer proezas en Francia?

U cuando se fundó la luz

esto sucedió en Venezuela?

And why did cheese decide

to perform heroic deeds in France?

And when light was forged

did it happen in Venezuela?

[XX-XXI]

Like France, names have their special meanings, obviously,
but like Venezuela, they look preposterous almost and small against the
processes of time. Even the days of the week are no more than names before
mortality.

Pero por qué no se convence

el Jueves de ir después del Viernes?

Why doesn’t Thursday talk itself

into coming after Friday?

[XIV]

Months are a matter of convenience.

Y cómo se llama ese mes

que está entre Diciembre y Enero?

And what is the name of the month

that falls between December and January?

[XLVI]

Until, as if by some magical transformation, Pablo Neruda
toward the end of his poem, asks questions about language itself. The poet
recognises that the very means of expression, his passport to immortality, are
only words that can do nothing to stop the inevitable.

Y no naufragan los veleros

por un exceso de vocales?

When they stow too many vowels

don’t sailing ships wreck?

[LXV]

Words are human consolation, they bind us together while
nature operates according to its own wordless process. Santiago in 1973 was in
crisis.

En qué idioma cae la lluvia

sobre ciudades dolorosas?

In which language does rain fall

over tormented cities?

[LXVI]

All one can do, at an extreme, or in the depth of
meditation, is put words out there, not knowing how they will make contact, or
if they will.

Un diccionario es un sepulcro

o es un panal de miel cerrado?

Is a dictionary a sepulchre

or a sealed honeycomb?

[LXVII]

Pablo Neruda gazes upon existence, watching the patterns,
knowing patterns are omnipresent, and that for humans in their mortal
awareness, language is the favoured pattern, the quickest means, our way to
understand ourselves. Even one’s name is original but borrowed from out of the
generations.

Qué letras conoce la abeja

para saber su itinerario?

So it can understand its itinerary,

which letters does the bee know?

[LXVIII]

All the Spanish lines are from Pablo Neruda’s book poem ‘El
Libro de las Preguntas’. The translations are by William O’Daly, published
under the title ‘The Book of Questions’ (Port Townsend, Washington, Copper
Canyon Press, c1991).